


Finders, Keepers

by DreamerInSilico



Series: Original flashfic [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, F/F, Flash Fic, Talking Animals, but i hope someone enjoys it, this series is probably yelling into the void
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-06
Updated: 2018-02-06
Packaged: 2019-03-14 12:49:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,072
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13590387
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamerInSilico/pseuds/DreamerInSilico
Summary: Flashfic incorporating the randomly-generated elements "a found dog, a murder, and an illicit tryst"One of the very, very few times in which you will see me use entirely first person narration.





	Finders, Keepers

**Author's Note:**

> I'm starting to port my original fic over here from Tumblr, as this is probably a better place for them to ever see the light of day. Chuck Wendig does a weekly flashfic challenge for which this was written; prompt here: http://terribleminds.com/ramble/2015/01/23/flash-fiction-challenge-must-contain-three-things/

The dusk’s rustling shadows should have envied her; she danced among them while they could only bob and shift in place. I watched her as she emerged from the trees, her eyes bright with mischief behind a midnight domino, her movements quick and precise and nearly silent. She was all cleverness and playful danger, and I do not think I had ever seen a more beautiful creature in my life.

…

_We had met for the first time nearly a week before, perhaps an hour before dawn, when I had just awoken and she was just returning home from her night. She paused to flash a grin at me, along with a silent request not to reveal her presence. I could hear a man’s cursing as he crashed through the patch of trees, and I smiled in return and nodded to her._

_The man would learn nothing from me, if he bothered to chase her that far._

…

I ran to meet her across the clearing, and she threw her arms around my neck, crooning a greeting into my ear as I laughed for the pure joy of seeing her. Only when she withdrew did I notice the metallic glint of silver wrapped around her fingers; she gave me a sly smile when she saw my eyes upon it.

…

 _I had learned of her fondness for baubles early on. She seemed to find them everywhere – in the grass by the road, caught in the cracks of a wooden deck, haphazardly fallen by a rubbish bin – and it was never so important_ what  _they were as simply that they existed to be found, and she had found them. They were the forgotten bits of the world, given new meaning as her keepsakes._

_The second time I saw her, she had found a stained cloth pouch of odds and ends, and was pulling the items out and examining them one by one as if each held some vital secret of the cosmos._

_I asked her to tell me one of their stories, and she held up an oversized safety pin before my eyes and grinned for a moment before obliging. She then proceeded to spin a tale of how that pin had valiantly held all its smaller kin together, threaded on its wire… until its owner had found need of the smaller ones, had taken them off the queen pin and used them and lost them, leaving the queen sad and alone in the bag with other things that were shinier than she, and no family to protect._

_It was not a very nice story, and I told her as much, to which she laughed again and asked how she could make it up to me._

…

Carefully, slowly, with the air of bestowing some sort of honorific medal, she draped the delicate chain over my head as I simply stood before her, amazed. It was a lovely thing, glistening as if it were liquid in the patch of moonlight in which we stood, and it carried a single, perfectly-formed black pearl as embellishment.

 _Does this have a story?_  I asked reverently as I looked down at the pearl.

_Of course. Everything has a story._

_Will you tell me?_

She reached out with a secretive smile, toying with the pearl for a moment before withdrawing her tiny hand once more and nodding, almost gravely.

_The chain was forged to hang a star in the sky, when the world was new and the sky was deep and black and the moon lonely in it._ _But one night, that star displeased the moon and was banished from the sky for its transgressions. The chain fell to the earth with the star, and the star was darkened as it left the sky, even though it still shone. The chain, having done nothing to bring about the moon’s disfavor itself, stayed bright as the day it was made._

_Exiled from the sky, the chain and the black star did not know where to go or what to do, so they simply lay where they had fallen, in the crevice between the roots of an old oak tree._

_And that is where I found them, and asked if they would like to hang somewhere beautiful again._

I had no words to thank her, then, so I stood and stared, as I am prone to doing. Apparently my awed adoration showed enough, however, that she understood. (Of course she understood. She could read the secrets of every hidden treasure she recovered; why should she not then be able to read me?)

Eventually, I asked a question, but not one I’d meant to ask.

_…You think I’m beautiful?_

_As the moon, but far more kind,_  she answered immediately, reaching out again and running her dark-skinned fingers through my pale hair, a gentle caress that made a shiver run all the way down my spine and my eyes close in happiness.  _Yes. You are very beautiful. And the star thinks so, too_.

 _I…_  I opened my eyes, to catch hers where they yet glittered at me behind her mask and savor the words in my mind as I prepared to say them.

But then there was a  _crack_  in the air that sent me stumbling back in shock and -

And she was slumped upon the ground, fallen like she claimed the star had done. I had never gotten to thank her, or to tell her that she was lovely, too.

I nudged at her, hoping that perhaps, she was only stunned, more frightened by the loud noise than even I had been, but… no.

“Finally got the sneaky bastard.” I heard his voice – the man from the big house on the corner by the woods – and growled, but the sound bled into a pained whimper as I realized he’d been hunting her that first night we’d met.

She’d lingered this close to meet me here.

“Dad, look!” Another voice, like the man’s but younger, higher. Ungraceful feet crashing through the undergrowth. I should have run, then, but I could not leave her.

And then a child’s arms had scooped me bodily off the ground and squeezed the air out of my lungs, and I whined more loudly through my teeth.

“She has… a necklace on her. But no collar. Can we keep her, Dad, please?”

 _You did not let me keep_ her _, though_ , I tried to tell him, but humans are not very good listeners.


End file.
